Aesthetics of City Life in San Francisco, California, ---- From the PoV of DbV in Chinatown --> Inspired by Tim Buckley's 1967 song, "Morning Glory."

Monday, April 2, 2012

Nirvana at The Cow Palace

This is The Cow Palace in Visitacion Valley on the southeastern edge of San Francisco by the Bayshore neighborhood of Daly City.

On April 9th, 1993, I saw Nirvana here. They headlined a benefit for victims of rape in Bosnia as the war in Yugoslavia raged. The indelible memory of their first song called "Rape Me," then unreleased from the upcoming In Utero album, hit the crowd like a Pacific typhoon. Cobain opened his mouth and out came a screaming sound that split in two, three, and four spiked tongues, lashing the audience. The sound was brutal, hurt, melodic, real, mesmerizing, uncomfortable, quiet/loud. Nirvana: a tightly-wound trio thrashing out sublime noise at the center of a storm, energy crashing around the cavernous arena as the crowd rose, fell & rose again with the sonic waves. By the end of the concert the main man had thrown himself backwards into Grohl's drum kit as though the force of the typhoon had finally taken him out too. Krist threw off his bass and that was it.